Chapter 6 is concerned with the role of the West India Regiments in maintaining and expanding Britain’s African empire in the final decades of the nineteenth century. The particular focus is the 1873-74 Anglo-Asante War, the first colonial campaign to capture the British public’s imagination and one which made a household name of commanding officer Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1833-1913). The Asante were among Britain’s most consistent antagonists in the imperial theatre and held a long-standing place within European discourses of African ‘savagery’. Warfare against them was cast as an interracial struggle. However, the involvement of the West India Regiments complicated this picture and the chapter compares the depiction of the regiments’ soldiers with that of Britain’s Asante enemies and local Fante allies. It also considers the military role allotted to the West India Regiment soldiers as the campaign developed, including the fact that they were used as baggage-handlers for the White regiments during the final march on Kumasi and were not permitted to enter the Asante capital. This shows that the way in which their constrained martial image, such that they were neither White ‘soldiers’ nor African ‘warriors’, had consequences in the military field.

This chapter explores the contrasting use of ordinances to detain two men thought to be Britain’s principal political enemies in West Africa in the 1890s. It begins with the deposition and exile of Prempeh of Asante in 1896. Under Prempeh, the Asante kingdom began to revive after its decline since the war of 1873–1874. Britain now sought to bring it under its influence, by inducing Prempeh to sign a treaty of protection. When he persistently refused to accept a Resident, colonial officials in Accra generated a pretext to invade Asante. Once there, Governor Maxwell decided to detain Prempeh, though he was no rebel, had not engaged in war, and had breached no treaty. His detention and ultimate exile was the result of pure imperial aggression and the perception that he needed to be removed to secure British control of Asante. It was unconstrained by any conception of the rule of law. By contrast, Bai Bureh, who was held responsible for the outbreak of the Hut Tax revolt in Sierra Leone in 1898, was held under an ad hominem ordinance after the Law Officers reported that he could not be tried for treason or rebellion in the newly proclaimed protectorate, not being a subject.